37 - Rotobrush - putting type behind video objects - Track Matts

Hey there, in this video we're going to look at Rotoscoping. And what we're going to do is mask something out and try stick stuff behind it. In this case it's going to be some text. So, in my 'Project' window, I'm going to open up, and bring in 'Rotoscoping 2'. And I'll make a 'Comp' from it. And this is our little bit of footage. Just the lens moving across. What I would like to do is select some text behind the lens. So it's kind of interacting with the background a bit. It could be a logo, could be other footage, it's up to you.

So, what we're going to do, first of all we need to 'Rotoscope' it, and we're going to use the 'Roto Brush'. So grab the 'Roto Brush'. Remember, Roto Brush doesn't work until you double click the layer. Now it works. We'll start at the beginning here, actually what we might do is, if I start there, I can Rotoscope it, but I'm missing the other half of it, so I might wait before it's on. Click, and drag across it. It's got most of it. Great. Perfect. Now, because it's got easy contrasting against the background, easy Rotoscoping.

You're going to probably have to do a lot of adding and subtracting by holding down the 'Alt' key, to remove, and without the Alt key to add. So that looks good to me. You can see, it's projected out that way. And that way, we want to do the whole thing. If I move it right away, and we're going to say move across a little bit. There it goes. It's going good. Across a little bit. It's doing good. If you haven't done Rotoscoping before, check out the video just before this, we've gone into a lot more detail, this one is more like a project.

All right, now I know, because I've done it before, that this one here is a really easy thing to Rotoscope so I'm going to jump out, can you see, it's cut the line all the way unto here, it's down till there. I'm going to go up to here. That's good. Wait for it to do its thing. See it creeping along, here it is. I'll see it all the way to the end, watch, it's going to-- I should go forward and just check it, because at the moment it's kind of a guess. I'm just assuming its doing its right job along here without any sort of interaction. So it's going to do it all. And I'm going to be happy because—

I've used this example hundreds of times actually. So I'm going to go this way. So getting this side as well, so it's reaching out. I should go in middle stages, and add, and subtract, but this one here is too good. I can sip a coffee while this one does its work. Well, it's hot. So, it's doing it all, waiting for this little line. 'Command', and boom. Now we have this pretty cool Rotoscope, can you see? Moving along here. Nice.

So, to check back on our composition, there's our mask. It's got a few little things I can play around with but in this case, because I'm sticking it back over the original, I'll just put something in between. You had noticed any of these gaps, you can play around with the 'Feather', and stuff. So what I'd like to do now is, I'm going to duplicate it. So I'm going to copy and paste it, so I've got two versions. So one at the top here, I'm going to right click, and call it 'Lens'. 'Lends'? I'm going to right click, call it 'Lens'. This one, right click. This was going to be the 'Background'. So I got two of them, right? 'Background'.

Remember that thing I showed you when we lost by double clicking stuff? I did, yes. Back to our 'Composition'. So I've got two, they do exactly the same thing. But this back one here, what I'd like to do is, turn 'Roto Brush' off, I can either turn the 'Effects' off, or just delete 'Roto Brush', this one. It's all first one still, here he is there, I've turned the 'Layer' off underneath. There's my 'Lens'. This guy kind of fills the background, now we need to weave something in between. We'll do it with some type.

So if I grab my 'Type' tool, click once. Typing my name. That's not-- can't even spell my name. And if that's all I wanted to do-- watch this. Just want the text sitting there. Doing some work. Let me show you 'types' in between these two layers. I'm clicking, holding, and dragging, so they're in between each other. You can see here now. I've done a cool little thing, we're in between. It's kind of interacting with the background. And what I'd like to do though is I'd like to track it so it kind of moves along, so it's a little—

Remember, earlier on we did something called Motion Tracking, it's kind of two way tracking, it's when-- we used it for the skate boarder, so we're going to do that again as a little exercise. Just sort of sticks itself to here, so it kind of moves along with it, so it looks like it's behind it. What we'll do is, let's go and find the tracker. Let's turn this layer off. And what we'll do is, we'll track-- it doesn't matter which one of these, you track the lens in the background. It makes no difference. We're going to go to 'Track Motion'. 'Track Point', we're going to make it a little bigger. A bit more bigger. Putting space bar to drag, remember, don't drag the white bits. Drag anywhere in between, see that black arrow. Grab that little corner there.

Now, earlier on, I said to you make sure you don't use the-- when using the tracker-- I'll have to make this a little bigger. Don't hit the play button because it's automatic, and it's cool, but you should do it frame by frame. That is true of most footage, except for this one. This one here is too good. It is a really nice, easy clear contrast, so I'm going to let the computer do the work. I'm going to start at, right at the beginning here. It's better to start right at the beginning, rather at the end. Either way, you move it all the way through. We start half way, track one way, and then go all the way back to here. Make sure you're at the perfect frame and then track backwards, so you can track forwards and backwards. It's just easier, to start at the beginning. We'll do this thing again. You, my friend-- and I'm going to kick back, relax, and try and watch it. Hey! I'm just keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't jump off too much. I saw a little bump there, a little bump there. And that's going to affect my type. So I should go back now, and adjust those ones.

You can go through and just see whether it's the jumps. Where else does he jump? There's one there. And I can physically go through, and move these things. See this bit of a jump, where is it? If you can see Page Up, Page Down-- if you're on a laptop, it doesn't work. PgUp/PgDn moves you frame by frame. You can see there's a little bit of a jump, that's not bad actually. I'm not too worried about it. Let's just see what it looks like. So I'm zooming out. 'Control -', or 'Command -' on a Mac. So I've got my tracking points. Now, if you remember from before, we're going to have to make 'Layer', 'New', 'Null', because the text won't follow that track point but the null will, and we can make the text follow the null.

I've got this 'Null Object', and I'd like to say 'Edit Target'.' Make sure it's the 'Null', click 'OK'. Click 'Apply', 'Track X and Y'. And hopefully now I have got this null object following along. It's not keeping up. But that's okay. It's because it's 'Full', and my computer is trying to do the video capture. Stressed out a little bit, but it looks like it's matched out. If I click on once here-- yes, it's almost done nicely. So we've got our null object, it's following all the bits and pieces. Next thing I need to do is get the text to follow that. So, you text, I'd like your parent. If you can't see this, you might be on-- actually you can see them both. Let's click on this one here, go to 'Null'. My type, I'd like you to follow my null. Follow him around, please. It's turning that type on.

So now I'm going to try and preview this. I'll turn it down to 'Quarter'. Make it run fast. Here he goes there. And hey, look, my type follows along, like it was part of that little thing there. What you might have to do now is, you might lower it down, just to make it look like it's a bit on the ground. In this case, 'Transform'. 'Position'. And what we'll also do, if you want to play around with 3D, so you can push it further back, and further forward, make sure it's on this little option here. Kind of adds a bit of 3D stuff. Watch this, with it 'off' you've only got a set of other controls, with it 'on', you can push it back further away.

So what I want to do actually is to just track it down. Clicks on the ground there. And to make it look a little bit more blue, let's hit space bar. Yes, it's still following. To make it look like it's on the ground there, I'm going to fake a shadow. So I'm going to copy this one, paste it. This top one here, I'm going to drag underneath, and I'm going to rename it, and call it 'Shadow'. 'Shadow'. I'm going to lay it down. I'm going to open it up. Go to 'Position'. And I'll use 'X Rotation ', and I'll lower it down. So it looks like it's sitting on the ground. I'm going to do '-90' I'm going to make the type 'Black'.

Is it helping? It's kind of just in the background there. One thing it's not doing, it's not tracking the null. So you follow the null as well, buddy. Can you see, I've moved my play head, and then got it to track. So I'm going to 'undo' until he was lining up perfectly. Then, make him black. Then, go into 'Track'. Awesome. What I'll also might do is, just to fake it a little bit more, I might grab the 'Scale', unlock it. Figure out who's doing the-- check out there, you see, it scales it that way. We're getting there.

The cool thing about it is, can you see, because it's 3D it's bending along. And let's crank it up to 'Full'. Let's lower the 'Opacity'. Where are you? 'Opacity', Lower it down. And we're going to add a blur filter, so I'm going to go to 'Effects & Presets', 'Blur'. We'll use "Gaussian Blur'. 'Gaussian'. Can't spell Gaussian, but I can spell the first three letters of it, that's all that we need. And we're going to try and add it to it, and we go 'Shadow', grab the blurriness. How blur should it be? Just checking him out there. Here we go.

What I also might do to make the text a little bit more believable, it's quite grainy back here, I might add some grain to the text. To do it, this Daniel Walter Scott layer, I'm going to find my 'Effects & Presets'. There's this one here called 'Noise'. There's a whole bunch of them. I'm just going to use 'Noise', add it to this layer. I'll zoom in to show you what I mean. Noise does this. If I crank it right up, nice little spotty. But I'm just going to lower it down to make it look like the background. Can you see, it's kind of speckly stuff in the background here. That's too much for me. And I might also add the blur to it. 'Blur', because it's just a little further back. It's too crisp when it comes through from, obviously After Effects. It's made it perfect as a candy, but in terms of my-- remember, blur is too long, 'Gaussian'.

Let's go and add it to the type layer. Let's crank it up just a little bit. I have to zoom out. Can you see, just to make it feel like it was more in there, you see, that little bit, to match the background, that can be sharper. You know it's not super sharp. So to just match it with the background you can play with the different blurriness to make it feel like it was there. You might add some noise to the shadow as well but in this case, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to put it down to 'Third'. Preview it. It moves along, the shadow moves. It's behind that thing. I could now animate the type if I like to. Oops, 'Save'. I can animate the type so it slides in. So I could start with this now, and animate this all the time but I'm going to leave it for the moment, I'm happy with that.

So that is how to use Rotoscoping to sneak back different things on a layer, and also sneak things in potentially between them. All right, I'll see you in the next video.